2018 Diana Forsythe Prize Announcement

The Society for the Anthropology of Work (SAW) and the Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC), a committee of the General Anthropology Division (GAD), announce Sara Ann Wylie as the winner of the 2018 Diana Forsythe Prize for her book, Fractivism: Corporate Bodies and Chemical Bonds (Duke Press 2018). Sara Ann Wylie is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Anthropology, and Health Sciences at Northeastern University.

The Forsythe Prize committee also awarded Sophia Roosth honorable mention for her book Synthetic: How Life Got Made (University of Chicago Press 2017). Sophia Roosth is the Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University.

The Diana Forsythe Prize was created in 1998 to celebrate the best book or series of published articles in the spirit of Diana Forsythe’s feminist anthropological research on work, science, or technology, including biomedicine. The prize is awarded annually at the AAA meetings by a committee consisting of one representative from the Society for the Anthropology of Work (SAW) and two from the Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC). It is supported by the General Anthropology Division (GAD) and Bern Shen.

“Sara Ann Wylie tells both a sobering story about industry practice and government negligence and an inspiring story of how gas patch residents, artists, civil servants, NGO activists, and health, environmental, and social scientists have responded to fracking. The political implications of this impressive and important book will be far-reaching.”

“Wylie makes an exciting and timely scholarly contribution that is relevant well beyond the scope of those concerned with the anthropology of energy. This book is useful to social scientists to inform research and teaching on topics spanning science and technology studies, energy policy, sustainability, environmental health, digital humanities, and applied and design anthropology. The relevance of this work also extends beyond academia, and would be of great value not only to gas patch communities that are still struggling to demonstrate the links between chemical exposure and illness, but to community leaders and activists that are engaged in a growing array of citizen science initiatives.”